Has anyone ever had experience with is? When you think about it, normal shift patterns are kind of illogical:
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Tom, I have never personally used one on a VW, but one of my friends growing up had a dodge with a hurst straight line shifter and it was kind of a no brainer, up, down, up down, don't forget where you are... as you need to row precisely. IT reminds of a movie quote, "we keep you alive to serve this ship, so row well and live"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPr_GBMu4O4
Oh yeah, pull the trigger for reverse.
He liked it for racing.
Ray
The Scat vw shifter is not a 'ratchet' shifter like the v8/muscle guys use. The 'straight' refers to the shaft. It's 'straight', not angled back. B&M and Hurst made the ratchet shifters. I'm not aware of one the air cooled set.
Ted
We used an inline shifter in the "Blow It Up" drag car we built with Raby. I don't know if it was MSE or Long or JCL, Jake would know. It was neat. Probably great for a drag car, and maybe even a road race car, but I couldn't see shifting one on a daily basis. I believe they called it a Vertigate shifter
I know it required a matched nosecone and custom transaxle mounts, and IIRC it also required some machining on the sliders as well.
If you install a Hayabusha motorcycle engine in your speedsters you can have an inline shifter:
Ron O posted:If you install a Hayabusha motorcycle engine in your speedsters you can have an inline shifter:
I am quite surprised that no one has ever put a Superbike motor in a Speedster. It has been done to VW's so it seems only natural someone would do it. Like this one:
Probably more like this one though:
The shift lever in a Rolex Series Porsche is a straight-line, ratcheting shifter in about the same place as a "normal" shift lever (as opposed to some cars with paddle-shifters on the steering wheel, like Kathy's Outback). The top of the lever is, IIRC, a bit higher than "normal", and about in line with the driver's hand when at 3 o'clock on the steering wheel so he/she can just flip sideways to reach it.
On the Porsche GT race version, each upshift is a tap towards the rear (the lever moves about 1/2"), each downshift is a tap forward. Current gear is shown both on the dash, next to the tach, as well as on the steering wheel center. I think the Porsche transaxle is a dual clutch version, so shifts are almost instantaneous and usually made without moving the right foot from the floored pedal and no foot clutching involved.
We might want to check w/ the F1 weenies here, but I recall some discussions a while back about how the F1 business got way into the PDK-type trannies, paddle shifters, foot to the floor all the time business because, well, it is faster. But then they decided that the next step was to just take the drivers out of the car, save some weight, and be faster still. So in the interest of giving the drivers something to do, they spec'd the formula to actually require using a clutch pedal. IIRC. PS: recently no lesser a car company than Porsche itself introduced what we might call a throw-back 911. A new car that actually had a manual gear box separating the wheels from the motor with a standard clutch and disk system. Back to old-school. Probably was normally aspirated too, I forget. All of this then done for the situations where driving matters. Which is every second of every turn in a Speedster. Just sayin' . . .
Formula 1 cars do have a clutch. But it is only used for launch from a standing stop.
There is no clutch pedal. There is a clutch paddle on the steering wheel/column. And there are upshift and downshift paddles.
Clutch is electrically actuated; hydraulically controlled. The computer matches revs. Drivers don't have to lift.
I am quite surprised that no one has ever put a Superbike motor in a Speedster.
Me too.....or in a dune buggy.